


Peaches and Plums

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mosaic, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-09-19 13:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17002395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: Back in Fillory, present day, Eliot struggles with the rush of memories from a life he apparently lived, even though he didn't. But there's a quest to be finished, a kingdom to be run, and a world with no magic to make it all infinitely more difficult. So what's a High King to do when flashbacks won't stop and Quentin acts like he just wants to move forward?I wanted to play with all the empty spaces from THE scene in A Life in the Day, and explore the fallout from it in the present world that never really got shown. I hope you enjoy!





	1. Overthinking It

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first run at a Magicians fic ever and the first time I've written fanfic in quite a while, but Queliot has captured my heart y'all. There are so many places I want to go with this, but I figured I had to start somewhere! Hope you all like it! Leave comments if you wanna see more, chapter two is currently in the works.

“Just give. Me. A _minute_ ,” Eliot said through gritted teeth, irritation sharpening the edges of his words until they cut effortlessly.

 “Babes, look, we don’t _have_ a minute. I need you to get your shit together now.”

 Margo’s voice matched his abrasive syllable for abrasive syllable, but Eliot kept the heels of his hands pressed firmly to his eyes. She was right. The quest was waiting. Their kingdom was waiting. Somewhere in the castle, Quentin was waiting. When had the weight of not one, but two entire worlds suddenly landed on his shoulders? And when had he decided he was okay with carrying it all?  He may have been miserable at Brakebills, but sometimes he missed the simplicity of burying his misery in drugs and drinks and warm bodies willing to occupy his senses for an evening.

 “Can’t magic save itself for once? Let its merry band of idiots take a breather?” he said. His swift answer was Margo prying his hands from his face, an unforgiving look in her eyes.

“What the fuck is this, El? It’s _your_ goddamn quest, you roped _me_ in. And you know I’ll do anything to help you out here because fuck if I don’t miss magic more than that purple vibrator I left in the cottage, but I didn’t ask for this. Any of it. Do you see me moping over some lost past that probably sucked ass anyway? I mean, you apparently died, right? Sounds like a fuckin shitshow to me,” she said, hands on her hips, standing her ground, as always.

Her voice echoed slightly in the high marble ceilings of the throne room, only serving to add to the power of it. Margo had always known how to command a room. Or in this case, an entire castle. Eliot shook his head, a mess of dark curls flying from the places where they stuck out around his crown. “I know. Down, Bambi. I get it.”

 “Well,” Margo said, tapping her gorgeous pointed toe boot on the floor, “What I need you to GET right now, is your ass in gear. Q’s called some sort of all-questers-on-deck meeting.”

 Eliot groaned his disapproval but stood from his throne anyway. She was right. Margo was almost always right. But she had missed one fine detail. He wasn’t mourning the loss of a past he couldn’t remember. It wasn’t all lost when Margo stopped them from going to the mosaic in the first place. Oh no, not by a long shot. He remembered _everything._ That was the problem.

 “Let’s go see what our sweet, depressive Potter thinks we ought to do next,” he said, raising a hand in protest even as he followed Margo out of the throne room. “Which, I take issue with, by the way. His incessant need to be the big man in charge. This quest was bestowed upon _me,_ technically, and he keeps hijacking it.”

 Eliot pretended not to hear the words of the Great Cock ringing in his ears. _You have a brother of the heart. With the floppy hair._ This quest was just as much Q’s as it was his. It might have been theirs – both of them – more than it was anyone else’s.

 “Weren’t you just complaining about not wanting this thing?” Margo eyed him carefully, clearly uninterested in putting up with whatever rabid mood swing was overtaking him.

 “Well, yeah, but I want the _option_ of not wanting it, you know?” he said airily, twirling his hand above his head as though that elegant, meaningless movement explained what he meant.

 “Oh fuck,” Margo rolled her eyes, “Can you not be a teenage girl for two seconds here?”

 Eliot huffed, but he quieted and followed the path to the fairy-proof hallway, linking his arm in Margo’s. When they turned the corner, Eliot caught sight of Quentin pacing back and forth, hands twisting in front of him, long hair creating a curtain over his face. He could practically see the concentration on the younger man’s face, the way his forehead scrunched up, eyebrows practically in his hairline. He was trying to work something particularly difficult out, Eliot recognized the look in an instant.

 

****

 And suddenly, he wasn’t in the pale stone hallway convening with the other questers anymore. He was outside a small hut, staring at piles of tiles around them, looking up to catch that same concentrated, problem-solving look etched onto Quentin’s face in a different world, in a different time, in a different  _life._

 “Um – so,” Q started.

 "Yeah,” Eliot paused, understanding what he was trying to say before it was said, “Um… Let’s just save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?”

 A beat passed where Eliot’s heart was practically in his throat, and then Q nodded. “Yeah.”

 And that was that, or so he thought.

 The mosaic itself was increasingly frustrating by the day, but they still worked at it diligently, documenting each failed attempt and starting over again. And again. And again. By the end of the day, they were both exhausted, and by the end of this particular day, Eliot was especially exhausted. He’d been doing his best to follow his own advice, to save his overthinking for the puzzle, but it was difficult when he kept catching vivid glimpses of the night before in his mind.

 He watched as Quentin moved through the little hut, anxiety coming off of him in waves as he filed away the drawings from the day according to some intricate organizational system he’d made up, and Eliot had let him run with. He’d thought he’d had a pretty good handle on all of Quentin’s… Quentinisms before they stepped through the clock and into this past version of Fillory, but the level of familiarity every tick, every look, every sigh now held in his heart only proved to him that he hadn’t known as much about the younger man as he’d assumed. So, it was unsurprising to the former (or future? Time travel had never really made sense to him) High King when Quentin looked in his direction with those big, worried eyes.

 “Hey, El?”

 Eliot blinked away the interest in his amber gaze and replaced it with practiced nonchalance. “Hmmm?” he hummed in response.

 “You ever think about what’ll happen if we don’t figure it out?”

 The fear in Quentin’s tone was poorly masked, even to the ears of someone not as well trained in emotional avoidance. Eliot’s immediate instinct was to diffuse.

 “No, not really. That’s not how this story goes, Q. You’re the hero, and the hero doesn’t die halfway through the quest,” he said dismissively.

 “Well, the hero also generally doesn’t kill a God and get magic turned off in the first place, so,” Quentin retorted, “I’m not sure the usual literary epic rules apply here.”

 Eliot paused, elegantly wrinkling his brows at his…. friend? Fellow quester? Brother of the heart? Man he kissed and then some the night before? Quentin may have had a point, but if they couldn’t count on fairytale rules in this fairytale land, well, then what was the fucking point of it all?

 “So we’re playing parts in Homer’s Morally Gray Odyssey. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

 “Yeah, but what if you are?”

 “Then I try to be right again tomorrow. We don’t have a lot of choice here,” Eliot said finally, sighing heavily.

 “Huh….” Quentin’s unspoken anxieties were enough to drive Eliot completely mad.

 “Come on, out with it,” he prompted, waving at the space in front of him. “The floor’s all yours.”

 “No, it’s, it’s nothing.”

 In lieu of rolling his eyes so hard he gave himself a headache, Eliot replied, “Convincing.”

 “It’s just – “ Quentin’s hands were headed for his hair, a nervous tick Eliot had learned to recognize long before they’d spent a year with almost solely each other. “I know we said no overthinking last night –“

 Eliot held up a hand, shaking his head as he stood. He tucked in the olive green fabric of his shirt that had been pulled loose in the movement.  “Stop. No, nothing good can follow that sentence. And no offense, but I think I’m about up to my tile-riddled brain in ‘nothing good’ for the day.”

 He’d woken up that morning with an impressive amount of hope in his heart for Eliot Waugh. Quentin was lying beside him in bed, his own arm draped protectively over Quentin’s waist. It was something he’d never really been able to stop himself from doing, protecting Quentin. Even when it came at the cost of his own destruction, it was a fee he would pay a thousand times over. In the morning light, Eliot was quite certain he’d never seen anything as beautiful as the peaceful planes of Quentin’s face awash in the golden-pink of the sunrise filtering in through the window. It struck him in that moment how rarely he saw the younger man looking at peace. The calm on Quentin’s sleeping face then was a stark contrast to the intense anxiety that had clouded his every feature nearly as soon as he woke up.

 One year. It had taken one year for Quentin Coldwater to break his heart again. But the way he’d looked at him after remembering the previous night; the way he’d practically jumped, and then almost fell, out of bed, tucked his hair anxiously behind his ears, dressing quickly and insisting on getting to work had done the trick. It took everything Eliot had to give him the out earlier that day, he didn’t think he could bear to drudge it back up in order to allow the younger man the space to verbally hammer the final nail in Eliot’s extremely premature coffin.

 “El – “ Q protested, but Eliot sauntered away in the direction of the kitchen.

 “Seriously? Can we not Quentin this to death, please?” he said, his voice betraying the exhaustion he felt at the prospect of having to listen to Quentin detail all the ways in which he was “really great, but…” That was typically his speech to give.

 “Eliot, for fuck’s sake, would you let me finish a goddamn thought for once?”

 Quentin had followed him into the hut’s tiny, primitive kitchen. The forcefulness in his voice caught Eliot off guard. With considerable effort, he stopped himself from speaking again by biting his lower lip from the inside and crossing his arms with impossible grace over his chest. He arched an eyebrow in a sort of challenge for Quentin, conceding him the floor.

 “Oh, um. Okay. I didn’t think you were really going to –“ Quentin must have caught the exasperation that swept into Eliot’s gaze, because he corrected himself quickly, “Right.”

 “Look, I just – I’ve been thinking and I know that all of this,” his hands flailed around him, trying to encompass the hut, the mosaic, and the time they’d stepped into in one erratic gesture, “Is just, y’know, not at all what either of us expected. And I dunno, it’s a different world, but it’s also not? And you’re still Eliot and I’m still Quentin and I just think that’s something important. That’s something you should know, you know?”

 “Q….” Eliot interjected cautiously. Biting his tongue had never been Eliot’s strong suit, but he did his best, motioning for Q to wrap it up, smirking to mask the small spark of hope that had ignited in his chest. It was foolhardy, Eliot knew, but something in the tone of Quentin’s rambles shifted the day’s despair in him slightly.

 “What I’m saying – what I’m trying to say is – we’re here. And it’s familiar because it’s Fillory, right? But it’s also totally not because it’s Fillory like, forever ago, and we uh, we don’t know HOW long we’re gonna be here. We could figure this out tomorrow and I dunno, I just mean, if we did, if we do, I don’t think it would uh, I don’t want _you_ to think it would change the fact,” Quentin’s sentence sputtered out there, his left hand raising from the place it had settled deep in his pocket and coming to rest on the back of his neck, his elbow jutting awkwardly out from his side.

 “That I – I want last night to happen again.”

 A hush fell over the entire hut. In the heavy silence, Eliot’s heart took Quentin’s words and used them as lighter-fluid drenched kindling, growing the spark of hope into a wildfire that propelled him forward. He reached out his arms so that his hands cupped the sides of Quentin’s face a full three seconds (damn long limbs) before the rest of him did, and pulled the shorter man up to him, dipping down to meet him somewhere in the middle, their lips crashing together far less gracefully than they had the night before. He felt Quentin’s arm drop from the back of his neck, felt the uncertainty in the other man’s body as Eliot kissed him like he was the only viable source of oxygen in the room.

 When Quentin had started rambling, Eliot wasn’t sure what to expect, but it damn sure wasn’t the confession he received, and if this was a quick lapse in mental clarity brought on by the stress of another unsuccessful day at the mosaic, he wasn’t going to miss his moment. Eliot’s long fingers tangled easily into Quentin’s hair, and after a moment where Quentin’s entire body tensed against the sudden contact, Eliot felt him relax into it, felt Q’s hands wrapping around his waist, hands sliding up his back. They stayed that way for several minutes, Eliot’s tongue hungrily exploring the younger man’s mouth until finally he pulled away but kept his hands on either side of Quentin’s face.

 “Done overthinking it?” he asked, a slow, playful smile spreading across his kiss-swollen lips.

 Quentin looked dazed, eyes bouncing back and forth between Eliot’s as though searching for some sign that this was all a joke to the older man. He would find no such evidence. After a long moment, seemingly satisfied with his search, Q smiled, mirroring the joy Eliot could feel emanating from his own face, and lifted onto his toes to close the space between them again.

 


	2. What the Fuck, Poppy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quest for the fourth key goes awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, kids, we did it! We're officially canon divergent and I'm officially breaking my own heart. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments you guys left on Chapter 1, I hope you like Chapter 2 as well. Let's be honest, it's really only going to get worse from here, so strap in for the angst train with me.

“So, we need to use the ship, then, to find the fourth key,” Quentin explained, splaying the book on the windowsill before them.

 He looked at Margo, not Eliot, and Eliot did his best not to take offense to that as he steadied himself. The intrusion of the memory (echo? Hallucination? What the hell was he supposed to call it anyway?) had set him off-balance, but he masterfully covered it by leaning casually against the cool stone of the hallway.

 Margo stared at an expectant-looking Quentin for a few seconds before waving her hands in a wildly dramatic, dismissive gesture. “Wait, was that supposed to be a question? Seriously? Yes, yes, of course you can use the ship to go get the key we absolutely need if we want a chance at getting fucking magic back. Fuck, Quentin, did you seriously call a meeting for that?!”

 Quentin’s gaze immediately fell to the floor, which only served to spur on Margo’s mood. “Q! El and I have a kingdom to run here. A kingdom that’s been High King-less for too long, I might add,” she said, aggravation heating the words. She turned her accusatory stare toward Eliot. Eliot put his hands up defensively. It wasn’t like the mosaic had been a fun vacation idea he’d thought up.

 “Um, well, see, that’s the thing,” Quentin said, clearly more cautious with this stipulation than the previous one.

 “What’s the thing?” Margo pressed when Quentin took longer than a beat to continue.

 The mood in the hall was tense, nerves and irritation and urgency all mixing together into a vaguely suffocating thickness that coated the air around the three of them.

 “I, uh, I kind of need El for this one,” Quentin said finally, and Eliot, who had been doing his best to look anywhere else suddenly snapped his attention to Quentin. Quentin, in turn, averted his eyes instantly to, well, anywhere else.

 “I’m sorry,” Margo started, venom dripping from her words. It was only Eliot who caught the slight hint of insecurity lingering at the back of it. “You two just got back from abandoning your thrones while I was forced to marry a fucking child bride and you want to leave me alone to sort it out so you two can go play houseboat? Uh-uh, I don’t think so.”

 Her tone was ice-cold and damn determined and Eliot had to admit, losing an eye to a fairy deal had been mostly a pretty terrible thing, but the ornate, outfit-coordinating eye patches really served to up her already astronomically high bad bitch factor.

 “It’s not a want-to thing, it’s a need-to thing. From what I can decipher, this key isn’t a one-person kind of thing, and well, we still don’t trust Alice,” Quentin started on an explanation he must have anticipated having to give, because it flowed unusually well for a man who normally stumbled over everything when faced with the wrath of Margo. “And like you said, you’ve got an, uh, a bit of a marriage situation on your hands --”

 He continued with his line of reasoning, and Eliot might have found it a little bit sweet, how hard Q was going to bat for him here but the younger man was still, pointedly, ignoring him. Eliot chanced a glance at Margo and was instantly glad he did because the “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit right now?” look she tossed his way was equal parts withering and entertaining, a patented Bambi combination he had come to deeply admire over the years. He felt a pang, a longing, an echo of how much he’d missed her in the mosaic world.  He smirked in response, pressing his lips firmly together to repress what itched to turn into a full-blown smile and lifted his shoulders slightly in an “I know, but what are you gonna do? The kid has a point,” response.

 The message was received, Eliot was sure of it by the way she huffed, turning her wither on full blast as Quentin wrapped up his soliloquy on why this key quest required Eliot’s presence.

 “I’m still calling bullshit, and if I get out of this marriage without starting a war while you’re gone, I’ll be damned if you fuckers are gonna waltz back in here and take any credit for my exceptional leadership, but FINE. Take the Muntjac. Take Eliot. But please, for the love of whatever God isn’t actively trying to fuck with us at the moment, be reachable by bunny this time,” she conceded, begrudgingly, but with impressive grace.

 Queendom suited her so well.

 “Cool, um, great, thanks,” Quentin said, and Eliot nearly lost it at how obviously his former life partner had not expected to win.

 “On what planet would I stand in the way of our best shot at getting magic back? Because I can count two for sure where the answer is obvious,” Margo retorted.

 “Right, no, I know, I just – Thanks. Eliot,” Quentin said, finally, _fucking finally,_ turning toward him, “Can you have Benedict pull us some maps?”

 “Oh, so it speaks to me after all,” Eliot said spitefully, unfolding his arms from where they’d settled across his chest and rolling his upper back against the wall to push himself off of it. All it took was a single arched eyebrow from Margo before he dropped it. “Yeah, yeah. Maps, making it happen. Chop, chop, onward to Glory.”

 “Great. Now that that’s settled, if you useless monarchs will excuse me, I have an infant husband to not fuck.” Margo turned and left the hall, her heeled boots clicking magnificently every step of the way. The woman could exit with just as much impact as she entered a room, maybe more, and that was saying something. Eliot made a mental note to declare a day in her honor or something if they survived all of this.

 “Great, so, maps,” Quentin echoed, turning to follow Margo’s initial path. Eliot sighed, throwing his hands up in exasperation, following Q and calling for Benedict in one elegant, incredibly frustrated motion.

Not long after they sat in the same hall, surrounded by maps, the paper unfurled on the floor before them. Eliot sat, long legs folded beneath him as Quentin pointed to a dark area in the outer sea. Every time their hands almost touched, Eliot was painfully aware that it was the closest they’d been since they returned from, or were stopped from ever going to, their past-alternate life. Fuck, he was going to give himself a migraine if he kept trying to figure out the mechanics of what he remembered but apparently hadn’t lived.

 “So, from what I can tell, the fourth key is somewhere in The Abyss. It’s this uncharted area outside of Fillory where it’s kind of…. permanently night,” Q explained.

 “Do you really need me for this?” Eliot asked, unable to keep his focus when he had a million unanswered questions and Quentin’s shoulder kept brushing against his in a very distracting manner.

 “I need another quester, yeah,” Quentin replied simply. Oh sure, now he was brief with his language.

 “There are more of those than me, you know,” Eliot bit back.

 “Uh, I – yeah. Do you not want to do this?” Quentin asked, and the way his brows knitted together to match the confusion in his voice made Eliot consider that maybe he wasn’t the only one struggling with the aftermath of the mosaic after all.

 “No, no, I do. I’m just  - a little surprised you do,” he admitted, keeping his eyes firmly on the maps in front of him.

 “I just thought – I dunno, going on a boating quest together sounded good.”

 Eliot couldn’t stop the small, self-satisfied smile that tugged the corners of his lips upward in that moment. It was far from an admission that mirrored anything near the violent tug of war in his head, but it was a start.

 “Say no more El Capi-tan. Let’s go sail to some God-forsaken place where the sun literally never rises and get another key that does who-knows-what,” he said, a surprising amount of exuberance in his voice for the actual words he was saying. He jostled his shoulder against Quentin’s playfully, basking in the start he’d been given, “But, hey, we can do that thing on the bow of the ship you’ve always wanted to do,” Eliot said.

 “What thing?” Quentin asked, confusion still lacing his words, this time in a way that made Eliot laugh. He shook his head, draping his arm around the shorter man’s shoulders casually, pulling him in and pressing an effortless kiss to the top of Q’s head. “You know, the thing,” he murmured knowingly, amused when Quentin’s expression remained firmly bewildered.

 It took a moment before Eliot realized how much of his mosaic self had been in that familiar movement, but as soon as it hit him, he pulled his arm back to his side, clearing his throat and pointing to The Abyss again.

 “Looks like about a 3-day trip on the Muntjac. We should get going. I just need to check on Margo before we leave.”

 

****

 Three days. Three whole fucking days with just them and the boat’s crew, and they had somehow managed to talk about everything that wasn’t the only thing they needed to discuss. Now, as their boat headed into the edge of the overwhelming darkness of The Abyss, Eliot felt like the time for talking was over.

In his experience, these key quests hit a tipping point and maybe it was just a shot from the well-dressed hip here but floating into total darkness sure seemed like the point at which pedantic self-reflection was no longer a helpful use of time.

 “Any idea where, exactly, in The Abyss we might find this key?” Eliot asked, glancing at Quentin as they helped the crew light lanterns. The illumination was quickly becoming necessary as the eternal night swallowed the boat whole.

 Quentin rubbed the back of his neck nervously, which was never a good sign. “Is there really a way to know where you are in The Abyss? It’s just kind of…dark in all directions, right? I was kind of hoping for some sort of beacon or weird ringing that gets louder as we get closer or something,” he said sheepishly.

 “Well tie me down and fuck me stupid,” Eliot muttered, only slightly pleased when his specific choice of words made Quentin jump just a little. “That’s putting an awful lot up to chance in a very important mission there, Q.”

 “Yeah, maybe, I guess,” he trailed off, “But it’s not exactly like the book spells it out super clearly. Cryptic is kind of its thing if you hadn’t noticed.”

 “Oh, I don’t know,” Eliot said sarcastically, “I thought it was crystal clear last time. That was something I totally walked into willingly with all the cards on the table.”

 Quentin, whose jaw had fallen open just slightly at the first almost-actual mention of the topic they’d both been avoiding, looked like he was trying really hard to come up with a suitable response. Eliot was surprised at the way his blood rushed through his ears while he waited.

 “Do you hear that?” Quentin finally said, turning to look out at the water.

 God, he really would do anything to avoid this, wouldn’t he? Quentin was the one who signed them up for being suck on a boat together, mostly alone, for days. Did he really expect Eliot to _never_ bring it up?

 “Very funny, Q. You know if you didn’t want to --” but Q had already rushed to the side of the boat.

 Brow furrowing, Eliot turned his ear toward the water and he heard it, kind of. It was very faint, but it was enough to make him turn to Benedict. “Get me one of those…weird extendo-scope things that the pirates use in the movies,” he snapped his fingers and somehow, perhaps by sheer force of time spent deciphering Eliot’s Earth-isms, Benedict understood.

 Eliot stepped forward to join Quentin at the side of the ship, and as soon as he was beside his fellow King, he heard it again. It was still faint, but the voice distinctly human, and distinctly calling for help.

 “What the fuck?” he said, placing a hand on Quentin’s shoulder to pull him back from where he leaned over the edge, straining to see in the darkness. “Whoa there, cowboy. One unexpected wave and you’re Quentin, the Overboard instead of Quentin, the Fillorian King.”

 As if on cue, Benedict arrived with the spyglass. Eliot grabbed it, extending it as he raised it to his eye. “There’s a chick out there,” he said. Quentin grabbed the spyglass from him and looked for himself. “Oh, shit. There _is_ somebody out there.”

 Eliot turned to Benedict, who was standing by looking confused and uncertain. “What are you doing?! You heard the man! There’s someone out there! We need a life preserver and a really long rope – now!”

 Honestly, sometimes he wondered why he had royal helpers at all. To the pudgy man’s credit, as soon as he was ordered, he skittered into action, and with only a moderate amount of effort, and three ridiculous misses, they managed to pull the woman – average height and build, red hair, objectively nice breasts – onto the boat.

 Quentin rushed to her side to make sure she was ok, but Eliot hung back, towel at the ready, observing the situation with the skeptical eyes of a High King who had seen too much bullshit to trust readily.

 When the woman pushed away Quentin’s mother-henning, Eliot stepped forward, offering the towel. The woman accepted it, squeezing it over her hair first, examining her sopping clothes and seeming to decide they might be a lost cause. Eliot was sure they had something dry in the boat somewhere, as long as they decided she was worth keeping around, first.

 “Thanks, guys, I was starting to wonder if anyone would ever find me out there,” the woman said as she toweled off as much of her as she could.

 “And who is ‘me’ exactly?” Eliot asked, eyeing her warily.

 “Oh, right, how rude of me,” she responded sarcastically. “I was just busy trying not to drown, my bad.” Okay, maybe Eliot liked her. Just a little. She extended her non-towel-holding hand to them both. “Poppy Klein. Brakebills, class of 2016, at your service.”

The look Eliot and Quentin shared then said one thing very loudly and very clearly: _Holy shit._ But before either of them could try and convey anything more complex without actually speaking, Benedict shuffled over, a rabbit in his arms.

 “So sorry to bother you, my King, but High Queen Margo is requesting your assistance,” he said, nodding nervously toward the woodland animal that was sniffing the air around it rapidly.

 “Eliot, help. Married a twat,” the rabbit bellowed. Eliot’s eyes widened a little, and he followed Benedict below deck, raking a hand over his face as he did. It was never just one thing at a time anymore. Oh, no clusterfucks seemed to come in threes these days.

 After helping Margo devise a plan to keep the horny teenage mutant husband and the raging lunatic fairy queen at bay for just a while longer, all via 5-word bunny messages, Eliot headed out of his royal nautical chambers to see what the deal was with Missing Third Year Redhead Barbie and Refuses To Deal With His Non-Past Puppy-Eyed Ken.

 He found them below deck in the open common area, where the rich tones of the wood that made up the Muntjac were only made warmer by the glow of the lanterns and the red light emanating from the ship’s heartwood. It was an impressively elegant ship, ornate in every way, which had always suited Eliot’s tastes very well. All of his royal trappings were extravagant, even when the kingdom was staring down the barrel of very serious bankruptcy, and honestly, Eliot appreciated that dedication to appearances. If both of his worlds were going to fall to shit at once, he at least wanted to look like he was keeping it together on the surface.

 He stepped closer and saw that Quentin was holding something. Eliot’s breath hitched in his throat when he realized what the small golden thing was – the key. The key?! It couldn’t possibly be that easy, could it? Q looked as bewildered as he felt, but Poppy saw him first. She snatched the key out of Quentin’s hands.

“Hey High King,” she said with a smirk, tossing it across the space between them in his direction. “Catch!”

At the same time as Poppy tossed the key, Quentin’s eyes grew wide and he shouted “Wait, no, Eliot, don’t --”

Before he could finish his warning, the key landed in the palm of Eliot’s hand, and Eliot wrapped his fingers around it tightly, unwilling to lose what they’d come all this way to find.

“Touch it,” Quentin finished, defeat and fear marring each word as it came out of his mouth.

Eliot didn’t see what the big deal was until he looked up and found he was staring at a very smug, very mean-looking Eliot Waugh, and there wasn’t a mirror in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is already in the works, so hold onto your butts ;)


	3. Farm Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot's depression monster does his worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was surprisingly difficult to write. Getting into what I thought Eliot's depression monster would poke and prod at most hurt, you guys. But I loved getting to explore the depths of one of my favorite characters of all time. I wanted to get another taste of mosaic life in this one, too, since that's such a big part of what this fic is all about, and I really like how the flashback turned out. 
> 
> Huge thanks to knowledgekid and vharmons for beta-ing this one before I put it out there in the world. I was worried about messing up characterization in favor of angst, but you two helped me keep it balanced. 
> 
> I can't thank you all enough for the support, comments, and kudos on this so far. There's still so much for these boys to go through, in the past and as they move forward, so I hope you're all ready for more! Enjoy :)

“Shit,” Quentin said.  
  
Eliot didn’t notice him walking slowly over to him, approaching as though Eliot was a horse he was afraid of spooking. He didn’t notice, he was too preoccupied with the mirror image of himself staring at him like a challenge he couldn’t wait to conquer.  
  
“Just had to go for the glory again, didn’t you? Another stupid, rash decision you’re already regretting. Tell me, have you ever made a decision you didn’t regret?” Not-Eliot said, sneering through every word.  
  
“What the ever-loving fuck?” Eliot said, still staring in disbelief.  
  
“It’s the key,” Quentin said, his voice panicked. Heart-wrenchingly, Eliot could tell that he understood what was happening, and had no clue how to help.

Quentin’s words registered, slowly, as Eliot attempted to work out what was going on, and when the last words clicked into place in his head, he dropped the key onto a nearby table instantly.  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Eliot said, his sigh of relief cut short when Not-Eliot stepped up beside him.  
  
“Brava, dumbass.”  
  
“Wait, why’s he still there? You guys see him, right?”  
  
“No, but I know he’s there,” Quentin said, and something about the haunted way his words hung in the air didn’t do a damn thing to soothe his increasingly ragged nerves.  
  
“It’s the key,” Q repeated.  
  
“But I’m not holding the key, Q,” Eliot said through gritted teeth, trying to drown out the steady stream of insults coming from other-him.  
  
“It uh, it kind of… sticks with the last person who touched it, apparently. It’s like a… a depression monster, Poppy called it.”  
  
Q’s explanation was quickly followed by him stepping toward the table where Eliot dropped the key, muttering, “Here, I can just - ” but Eliot immediately threw out an arm to stop him, snatching the key back up.  
  
“You’re joking, right? Q, you’re diagnosed depressive. You used to plan out which buildings would be easiest to jump from without any help from a magically manifested dickwad. You are not touching this fucking key,” Eliot said sharply. Even faced with an asshole who looked exactly like him, spitting his worst fears at him, he couldn’t stop himself from trying to save Quentin.  
  
“Oooh, smooth move, just remind him of how miserable he can be, I bet that’ll make him fall right in love with you,” Not Eliot scoffed.  
  
“What do we do to get rid of it?” Eliot asked, turning to Poppy, blatantly ignoring the shittier version of himself mocking him in the background.  
  
“You can’t get rid of me. You can’t get rid of me any more than you can escape the fact that you’re just a farm kid from Indiana. I mean, really, who do you think you’re fooling with the fancy clothes and the over-produced cocktails, anyway?” Not-Eliot said, and Real Eliot dug his fingernails into his palms to stop himself from reacting, visibly and loudly.  
  
“Well, you can pass the key to someone else,” Poppy offered, “That’s what me and the crew did.”  
  
Eliot crossed his arms over his chest, steeling himself to ask a question he had the chilling suspicion he already knew the answer to. “We rescued you. No crew. What happened to them?”  
  
Poppy just shrugged, plopping down onto one of the overstuffed couches beside a warmly glowing lantern. “Couldn’t take the heat. Sorta… jumped out of the kitchen.”  
  
Quentin’s eyes widened as he put the pieces of the puzzle together Eliot had already guessed.  
  
“The key drove them to kill themselves?!”  
  
He sounded appropriately appalled, and Eliot wondered briefly if it was a bad sign that he wasn’t more shocked about it himself. Maybe he was just used to the world fucking him over like this by now. Maybe there really was something irreversibly broken inside of him, stopping him from caring more.  
  
“Of course you’re not shocked,” Not-Eliot sneered, “You’re just a heartless asshole. I mean, you killed a kid. You killed Mike. God, you didn’t even flinch when you murdered your own boyfriend. And they say I’m the monster.”  
  
Poppy said something in response, but Eliot didn’t hear it. He was too focused on the punch to his gut Not-Eliot had just delivered. It was unnerving, how quickly and vividly he could see the moment life left Mike’s eyes in his head. The emptiness that completely hollowed him out in the seconds that followed, as the truth of what he’d done settled in. Then the pain. Fuck, the pain.  
  
“You can make that stop, you know,” Not-Eliot said, an excited brightness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.  
  
Eliot set his jaw and balled his hands into tight fists at his side. He could practically feel the ends of his curls shaking with the effort to appear composed.  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” he muttered.  
  
“That all you got, Farm Boy?” Not-Eliot replied.  
  
Eliot wanted to scream, the memory of losing Mike, of finding Mike’s book in the library, of realizing what he’d robbed someone he’d been starting to love of, of trying to forget it all and never being able to rushing back to him, clear and excruciating.  
  
“El?” Q’s voice just barely broke through the pain, and he managed to drag his eyes away from the know-it-all smirk on Not-Eliot’s face to look at Quentin.  
  
“Hmm?” he said, trying to sound like his casual self, but he thought he saw a flash of worry cross Q’s face. Maybe he wasn’t being quite as measured as intended.  
  
“You sure you’re ok?”  
  
“I’m fine. It’s just an adjustment,” he said, waving away the worry in his friend’s words. “Is there any booze on this damn ship?” he asked, sighing with relief when his eyes landed on a bottle on the table across the room. After their first, dry, voyage on the Muntjac, he and Margo had demanded it have a properly stocked bar. It warmed his heart just a little to see that Margo’s commitment to the stock hadn’t waned in his mosaic absence.  
  
Eliot made a beeline for the bottle, crossing the common area in far fewer strides than would have been required of the average person and unscrewed the top in one fluid movement, not bothering with a glass as he took a swig.  
  
“You can’t drink me away. I AM you. Just unfiltered. All truth, all the time.” Not-Eliot smirked, folding his arms smoothly over his chest, leaning against a nearby wall and crossing his legs at the ankles, like he was settling in for the night ahead.  
  
Eliot glared at Not-Eliot and took a longer, deeper pull from the bottle.  
  
“That’s all you’re good for, isn’t it? You don’t deserve this quest. You don’t deserve that crown. You sure as hell don’t deserve Quentin, of all people. All you know how to do is get drunk and avoid anything that actually looks like emotional attachment. You’re not a hero, not even close. No wonder you keep ending up alone.”  
  
It took every waning shred of strength Eliot had not to lash out at the him that wasn’t there. He refused to seem weak, which was exactly what prompted another impressively long pull from the bottle when he heard himself whisper in his ear, “But you are weak. Weak little farm kid. You couldn’t cut it in Indiana, you were crazy to think you could ever cut it as a magician and a monarch. What a joke.”  
  
He kept telling himself that this mirror image of him was full of shit, but with every adamant self-reminder, he felt like he believed it less and less.  
  
“El,” Q said again.  
  
Eliot could hear the worry in his voice, and he was tired of burdening his friend – if they were even that anymore – so he grabbed the bottle by the neck and turned back toward his royal cabin.  
  
“I’m fine Q. Honestly, I thought he’d have more to throw at me. Clearly, I am as impeccable and impenetrable as I’ve always claimed to be,” Eliot said with as much of his usual bravado as he could muster. “I’m just tired.”  
  
He made quite a show of feigning a drawn-out yawn before he disappeared into his room, shutting the door behind him. It was only then, out of Poppy and Q’s sight, that Eliot let himself collapse onto the bed underneath the weight of the grief he thought he’d buried. It felt fresh now, and he wasn’t sure if it was his own mind or Not-Eliot conjuring up the image of Mike’s lifeless body on the floor beside Fogg, the image of his former bully, body twisted in awkward ways after Eliot willed him out in front of the truck. The image of his father, screaming at him for the only part of him that had ever felt right after he got caught kissing the neighbor boy in the barn. One after another, a relentless stream of his worst moments, of all the things that had broken him over the years, and God, why were there so many?  
  
“Because you fuck up,” Not-Eliot said simply. “It’s what. You. Do.”  
  
The haunting version of himself answered a question he hadn’t even asked, and the exhaustion Eliot felt in his bones made it impossible to stop the strangled shout that forced its way out of his throat.  
  
“Shut. UP!” Eliot said, tangling his fingers in his hair and tugging slightly, like the pain at his scalp might lessen the waves of it crashing into his heart, stealing the air out of his lungs.  
  
“Oooh, clever,” Not-Eliot said, and Eliot caught the delight in his voice.  
  
No. He was the High King of Fillory. He was Eliot Motherfucking Waugh. He was not going to let this manifestation win. He was not going to let another fucking key best him. They would find a way out of this like they always did.  
  
“Oh, there’s a way out,” Not-Eliot offered.  
  
Eliot lifted his face from where he’d buried it in his pillow and glared at the monstrous version of him, who was draped lazily over an ornate wooden chair in the corner of the room, carefully examining his nail beds with a horrendously self-satisfied look on his face. God, he hoped he never actually looked like that.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eliot asked. It was a stupid question, based on what Poppy had said, but if the quest was about to throw him a frickin’ bone for once, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.  
  
The brilliant, malicious grin Not-Eliot gave him then made his stomach turn. He instantly regretted the question.  
  
“You know exactly what that means,” Not-Eliot said.  
  
*****  
  
“You know exactly what that means.” His own words echoed in Eliot’s ears as he watched Quentin kiss Arielle. He ignored the way it made his skin feel like it didn’t fit quite as well as it had a minute ago.  
  
This wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he told Quentin to live his life here, at the mosaic. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that Q got it all wrong – all they ever seemed to do was cross their wires. But after 3 years together at this thing, he thought, he hoped the younger man would have learned how to decipher the Eliot of it all a little better. Most of what he meant wasn’t found in the words he spoke. It was somewhere underneath, in between, hiding in pauses, coiled around snark, and lurking just to the side of clever witticisms. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.  
  
Usually, his favorite part of these cyclical days was when Arielle went home and he had Quentin to himself again. But today, after failing at the mosaic yet again, and having to watch all the canoodling while he was at it, he was tired, and cranky, and really needed a cigarette in an oppressively nicotine-free land.  
  
“What a day, like, I mean, right?” Quentin was grinning like a puppy lovestruck fool as he went about prepping dinner for them both.  
  
Eliot picked at his fingernails, nodding without making eye contact from where he sat at the dining room table. “Indeed.”  
  
It was a twisted consolation, watching Quentin love someone else while Eliot still got to enjoy all the trappings of domestic bliss with him. A half-dream, a half-life, and it took a lot of energy for him not to scoff at how that had somehow become the overarching theme of being Eliot Waugh.  
  
“Isn’t Arielle just the best?”  
  
“She’s got nice peaches, I’ll give you that.”  
  
“El…” Q often used the nickname in fondness, and it made something jump around in his chest to hear it like this – playful and admonishing at the same time. He threaded his fingers through his hair, sighing lazily.  
  
“What?” he asked, smirking slightly for effect.  
  
“Nothing. Hey, veggie stew ok? It’s uh, kind of all we’ve got right now.”  
  
“Sounds… nourishing.”  
  
“We can do cobbler for dessert,” Q offered helpfully, and Eliot didn’t miss how he omitted the flavor. He didn’t have to say it, they both knew what it was.  
  
“My sweet tooth rejoices,” Eliot said dryly.  
  
The rest of the evening passed in familiar fashion. The sun set on the hut, washing everything inside in a soft gold, then a fiery orange, and finally a dusty purple that prompted Eliot to light the lanterns throughout their little home while Quentin finished the stew. They shared dinner and discussed theories to try tomorrow and the stew warmed and satiated him just enough that the tension in his muscles started to loosen, just a little. He couldn’t make a decent drink to save his life, but Quentin was surprisingly good in the kitchen. With a full stomach, he stretched his long arms overhead and let his legs unfold to their full length as well, crossing them at the ankle and smiling softly when his feet jostled Quentin’s legs under the table.  
  
They dance like that for the rest of the night. Quick, soft touches and even softer smiles, flirting without any follow-up. Eliot can see the conflict in Quentin’s face when their hands brush as they put away the dishes. He couldn’t seem to reconcile how he felt for Arielle with whatever it was that lingered between the two of them. It didn’t fit the rigid rules of love Quentin had put in place in his mind. Rule had never served Eliot well, and he was of the mind that if they were ever going to make their own, this was the world, the time, in which to do it. His own hesitations were different, selfish. The only person he hadn’t minded sharing Quentin with was Margo. She had always been the exception to all of his rules. Quickly, he buried the pang of sorrow that hit him at the thought of his Bambi. All of this Arielle business would have been much easier to handle if she were here.  
  
“Hey,” Quentin said softly as he reached for the dish hanging loosely in Eliot’s hand. “You ok?”  
  
Okay, so maybe he didn’t deserve a degree yet, but Quentin had managed to pass some advanced courses in what went on beneath Eliot’s practiced exterior. Or maybe he’d just stopped being so practiced, so carefully guarded after 3 years in a world that had little need for pretenses.  
  
“Yeah, Q. Just – “ he thought about lying, but didn’t see the point. “Thinking about Bambi.”  
  
Quentin toweled the bowl off quickly and stored it on the shelf, tossing the towel onto the countertop when he turned back to Eliot. Quentin reached up, brushing a fallen curl from Eliot’s face. The tenderness of the moment hurt more than missing Margo.  
  
“I’m sorry, El. But it’s like you said, we’ve gotta,” he faltered, clearly thinking twice about parroting Eliot’s own words back at him, even if he was only trying to help.  
  
“Live our lives here,” Eliot said, saving him the trouble. “I know, I know.”  
  
Quentin looked like he wanted to say more, but he either thought better of it, or couldn’t figure out what to say to soothe a wound that had no hopes of scarring completely, so he dropped it instead.  
  
They didn’t talk again until they were lying in bed, the blackness of the night enveloping them completely. Quentin hadn’t slept anywhere else, not consistently, since the night of their first mosaic anniversary. It was a little odd when he and Arielle started spending more time together, but Eliot wasn’t complaining. He much preferred the warmth, the solidarity of Q’s body next to his. It was only in these moments that Q gave him any real indication that Eliot hadn’t imagined a thousand moments over the last 3 years. Something about the darkness gave Q permission to ignore his rules, and while Eliot had always been something of a creature of the night, he was even more grateful for the hours after dusk when they brought this – Quentin curled into his side, his head resting on his chest, his rough, unsteady fingers tracing jittery patterns in the small patch of hair on Eliot’s chest.  
  
“Hey, so – “ Quentin said, pausing like he needed Eliot’s permission to continue.  
  
“You don’t have to do that,” Eliot said, raising his hand to thread nimble fingers through Quentin’s hair.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Wait for me to tell you you can talk.”  
  
“No, I, uh, I know. Habit, I guess.”  
  
Eliot scratched at Quentin’s scalp gently in response.  
  
“So, I was just kind of thinking, and I get that you don’t, you know, really like Arielle,” he said.  
  
“What? No, she’s fine, Q. I don’t dislike her,” Eliot said, and Quentin’s pointed exhale let him know just how little Q believed that.  
  
“Ok, whatever. Look, I know you don’t like to think about who you were before Brakebills,” Q’s voice came out in a rush now, the way it always did when there was something he wanted to say and he was trying to get it out before he lost the nerve. Eliot didn’t particularly like where this was going, but he knew better than to interrupt a Quentin Coldwater nervous word vomit.  
  
“But, Arielle was saying they could use some help on her farm, and we could really use some more food around here, so I uh, I sort of told her you kind of know about this stuff, and she was just like, really excited? I think she really wants to get to know you better and I, uh, I’d really like that, too.”  
  
Eliot groaned. He groaned because the idea of Fillory forcing him back to his awful roots, again, was just exactly the kind of sick joke he would be the punchline of. He groaned because the nervous way Quentin spoke about Arielle reminded him of how he used to talk about Alice, which only drove home how much he cared about her. He groaned because, even amongst all that bitter, there was the unmistakable sweetness that Eliot was important to Quentin, that his opinion mattered. That, at least for now, he had Quentin. Like this, against him, making him feel like he mattered in the only ways he’d ever really wanted to matter, above and beyond the seemingly endless puzzle they were solving together. And he wasn’t just talking about the mosaic.  
  
“I’ll talk to her,” Eliot conceded, and he swore he could hear Quentin smile in the quiet.  
  
*****  
“You were the consolation prize,” Not-Eliot’s voice rang in his ears with cold, cruel mirth.  
  
How? What, even his flashbacks were privy to this asshole’s commentary now?  
  
“Everything in your head is in my head, dipshit. I am you, figure it out. Now,” he said coldly, “Are you gonna jump, or what?”  
  
It was only then that Eliot felt the cool spray of the sea on his face and realized where he was. Somehow, he’d wound up above deck, standing at the bow of the ship. His hands were gripping the top railing with white-knuckle tightness, and he had one foot propped up on the bottom rung.  
  
“What the fuck?” Eliot said, his unspoken follow-up questions feeding right into Not-Eliot’s existence.  
  
“You’re really very easily wounded, and extremely susceptible to suggestion, as it turns out,” Not-Eliot explained arrogantly. “But that’s not important, is it? I honestly just can’t believe you thought Quentin loved you, even there. Even then. He married someone else, for Christ’s sake. He had a family. You, you were just there, Eliot. Don’t mistake that for belonging. I mean, fuck, how desperate do you have to be?”  
  
Logically, Eliot knew he shouldn’t listen. He knew this was what the key did. But it hurt, and it warped his warm memories. It twisted one of the only semi-decent things he had in his world, and it did so easily, like it was a truth he’d known all along, and had just been refusing to acknowledge.  
  
“Because it is the truth, Eliot. You know that, deep down. Stop fighting it.”  
  
Not-Eliot’s voice was softer now. Somehow, that was so much worse. Everything in his head told him to step down from the railing, to walk away from the edge of the boat. And yet, he felt his other foot step up, and the added height it gave him forced his hands free from the top rung. He knew, if he just leaned a little further, he could shut that douche canoe up. The pitch black of the water looked inviting. His stomach twisted.  
  
“Go on, that’s it,” Not-Eliot said quietly. In any other circumstance, Eliot wouldn’t have been able to hear his words over the roar of the sea against the ship. But Not-Eliot wasn’t Not-Eliot at all. It was Eliot, and that was the problem. He heard himself crystal clear.  
  
“Eliot!”  
  
That wasn’t him. That was Quentin, and he sounded -  _wrecked_. The sudden intrusion of a third voice in his mind startled him. Which, as it turned out, was a very bad thing for a very tall man on a very slippery railing. He stumbled forward, nearly losing his balance and tipping into the sea, thought he might have heard Not-Eliot clapping in the background, and caught himself just before he completely tipped over. He steadied himself on the railing, bent over at an awkward angle so he could grip the top rung. His heart was pounding in his ears as he stepped down, turning back to see if Quentin was really there at all. The look he saw on the younger man’s face broke another piece of his barely-held-together heart.  
  
He was just so tired of hurting Q. He raised one of his feet back to the rung.


	4. The Truth of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin tries to talk Eliot out of the key's grasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for hanging in there for so long between chapters! This one was so hard for me to write for some reason, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Old!Queliot is adorable, that is all. I cannot thank you enough for all the comments, likes, and kudos you've given me so far. This piece has a much bigger piece of my heart than I anticipated, and getting to share it all with you means the world to me. Seriously, thank you so much for reading, and for continuing to come back.

“God, Eliot, stop!”

Eliot hated the pain in Quentin’s voice. He hated it more than anything.

“You can make him stop hurting. You can make all of it stop hurting. Honestly, Eliot. It would be so easy,” Not-Eliot said, but Eliot hesitated. If there was one person who could keep him from doing this, one person who could pull him back from the edge, it was Quentin Coldwater.

“Eliot, please don’t!” Q was still shouting, but he sounded closer now. He felt closer.

Eliot turned his head to see Quentin several steps closer, slowing his movement when Eliot caught sight of him.

“Come on, Q,” he said, his voice ragged, like he’d been screaming for hours. “Just, let me end this. I’ll leave the key, you can pick it up with a cloth or something. Problem solved. Key quest back on track.”

“That’s bullshit!” Q said, stepping closer again, reaching Eliot’s side before he had time to do anything drastic.

“You’re right,” Not-Eliot growled. “You can end this, don’t let him talk you out of it.”

“No, Q. It’s not bullshit. It’s smart. The rest of you can figure this out without me,” Eliot said, his foot still perched on the rung.

“Not like you were really much help anyway,” Not-Eliot added, “Quentin didn’t even figure out the mosaic until after you died.”

Eliot shook his head. God, he hadn’t thought of it like that. It made sense. He gripped the rung tighter, willing himself to shift his weight upward.

“No!” Quentin shouted, placing his hand over one of Eliot’s. Eliot stopped.

“Why not, huh? Can you give me one good, legitimate reason? Not some shitty reason about how the quest needs me or how I’m some great magician if I can just stick it out until we get magic back, or how Fillory needs me. That’s all so fucking flimsy, and we both know it. Give me a real reason, Q.”

Quentin was quiet. Eliot took it as an answer. He brought his other foot to the rung, hoisting himself up once more.

“I already lost you once, El, don’t make me lose you again.”

Eliot’s breath, already shallow alongside the rapid pace of his heart as he looked over the edge of the boat into the blackness of the sea, hitched in his throat. It was the closest thing to acknowledging the mosaic at all that he’d heard since they got back. He stepped back down.

“What?” he asked, his skin immediately prickling fearfully at what might come next.

“I buried you,” Quentin continued carefully, and Eliot swore he could feel the pain of those words, the weight that this particular memory, one Eliot had been spared, put on Quentin’s shoulders. “After, fuck, everything, Eliot, I had to  _ bury  _ you. And I know you want to say some crazy, insane, key-induced shit about how I won’t have to bury you this time, some dumb fucking thing about how the sea would be your grave, but I don’t want to hear it. Because that’s not what I mean and you damn well know it.”

He was right. Eliot knew it. Eliot knew it with every single cell inside of him, and he still couldn’t get Not-Eliot to stop hissing inside of his head.

“Stop hurting him, once and for all,” It mocked, cold and relentless, saying everything he was already thinking. Or, everything he thought he was already thinking. He wasn’t sure where his thoughts ended and the key’s manifestation’s began. They were tangled too closely together, intertwined too intricately. The realization picked at the edges of a barely-healed-over scab. Maybe he and Not-Eliot weren’t all that different after all. That was reason enough to jump.

“I keep hurting you,” Eliot said. It wasn’t a particularly emotional statement, despite the way it ripped open one of the fresher fissures in his heart, freeing a new trickle of pain. It sounded as much like fact as it did anything else. The words did not ring in the air as the desperate plea they felt like. Somehow, still, Quentin heard it for what it was.

“I don’t fucking care about that. We’ve been hurting each other for years,” Quentin said, squeezing at the top of Eliot’s hand like the notion that he was here, physically might be enough. It might have been, to an Eliot who hadn’t lived an entire lifetime with Q. Who didn’t know what it was like to have more.

“Yeah, well, I do fucking care,” Eliot spat back, gripping the railing tightly beneath Quentin’s grasp once again.

He felt like he was on a high-speed emotional seesaw. Quentin’s words lifted him up, Not-Eliot’s brought him crashing back down again in a rush. It was exhausting. He was so exhausted.

“That’s – fuck – that’s not what I meant, Eliot. Christ, can you just, will you just step down from that fucking railing already? I can’t make this come out right with you half a second from going overboard.”

“All I’m saying is that I could stop hurting you, make your life a little easier. Isn’t that what you want?”

Not-Eliot had him pretty convinced that was what Quentin wanted.

“If you’re asking whether or not I want to watch you  _ die  _ again, the answer is no, Eliot.”

“So turn away then. Don’t watch,” Eliot said coldly. He was a little bit impressed with himself, with how sure he sounded even as his pulse pounded in his ears and his vision swam, even as he half-choked air instead of breathing the even inhale-exhale pattern of a man at peace with his decision.

“No!” Quentin’s strangled shout surprised Eliot but didn’t change his mind.

It was a flash of movement. He felt Quentin’s hand leave his own. He pushed himself up on the railing, taking the absence of contact as resignation. He heard Not-Eliot laughing gleefully in the background as he shifted his momentum. He felt Quentin’s arms wrap around his waist, felt the center of gravity in his body pulled loose as he lost purchase on the railing.

Then his body collided with the deck, a hard thud echoing in the space around them, any remaining air expelled from his lungs on impact.

“Get. Up. Get up! Getupgetupgetupgetup!”  Not-Eliot growl-screamed in his ear. “You fucking idiot. You couldn’t even kill yourself properly. God, you really are just completely useless.”

For whatever depraved, self-loathing reason, Eliot tried. He tried to get up, but Quentin’s arms pulled forcefully around his waist, keeping him, for the most part, locked in place.

“Oh my God, stop squirming, I’m trying to save your stupid ass!” Quentin said, letting go of Eliot’s upper thighs for a split second, only so he could reattach himself just above Eliot’s hip bones with renewed vigor.

“Did you ever consider that I might not want to be saved?” Eliot said darkly, moving his hips around, struggling to break free. He didn’t remember Quentin being this strong.

“Did  _ you  _ ever consider that your judgment might not be exceptionally sound right now?” Quentin countered.

Logically, something clicked into place at Quentin’s words. Eliot knew he was right, but the key made logic far less appealing than certain other alternatives, like flinging himself into the abyss. 

“Don’t. Eliot, please,” Q added, his voice thick with something, desperation maybe, that broke through the darkness inside of Eliot.

In direct opposition to what Not-Eliot was telling him, Eliot turned to look at Quentin, really look at him. What he saw in his eyes, raw and unfiltered, took him somewhere else entirely.

****

Eliot had never been particularly afraid of death. Hell, there was a time where he might have even welcomed it. That was before, though. Before he had so much to lose, before he’d already lost so much.

It was a strange sort of irony, that when your life was waning, when you were so much closer to death’s embrace than you were away from it, you understood how much you had to live for. He sat in the wicker chair, the same heavy patchwork quilt he’d draped over Quentin and Teddy countless times laying across his lap. There was a slight chill running through him. It was an omnipresent thing anymore, another symptom of old age. Flexing arthritic fingers in his lap, he watched as they, with moderate struggle and stiffness, mimed Poppers that meant nothing to the mosaic. It was just a habit he’d never been able to break. When he could feel the magic that existed here, it was hard not to want to do it, even when the mosaic didn’t give a damn.

“You’re ridiculous,” Q said, staring pointedly at his hands. His slightly wobbly tone held nothing but affection, and Eliot just smiled.

“It’s better than those stupid physical therapy exercises you tried to talk me into,” Eliot said, “Feels more me.”

“Stubborn and dramatic? Yeah, I’d say so,” Quentin said as he slowly, carefully slotted another piece into the mosaic.

“Oh, you love me and my wrinkly, stubborn, dramatic ass. Don’t even,” Eliot quipped back, and there was mischief in his eyes, just as bright and clear and troublesome as if he were still 23 years old and just getting started at this thing.

Quentin did that to him, made him feel young again. Made him feel like he could do this for a thousand lifetimes as long as Q was by his side.

“That I do,” Quentin said, softer now.

The simple acknowledgment of their feelings as fact was routine by now. Decades had gone by since they shed the preconceived notions and pretended they weren’t as important to each other as they knew they were. The number of “I love yous” the pair ping-ponged back and forth in a given day was borderline nauseating, probably, but they didn’t care. Despite the familiarity of it, Eliot still smiled every time. “Used to it” would never be how he described Quentin loving him. It was too big, too important, too much of what he wanted for him to ever get used to.

“That’s supposed to be a yellow one, you know,” Eliot said, pointing a finger at a tile three to the left of the one Quentin had just placed. Quentin pointed to the tile in question, looking up at Eliot with a slightly confused look on his face. Eliot nodded.

“That  _ is  _ yellow, you old fart!” Q said, confusion dissipating above his brow and giving way to loud, jolly laughter.

It was the laugh of a man who had lived a full life, and that warmed Eliot far more than any blanket ever could.

Eliot leaned forward in his chair, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose and squinting a little at the tile he could have sworn was orange. Upon closer examination, he found that it was indeed yellow. Slumping back into his chair, he huffed out a breath of laughter. “Well, shit. Now I know why old people say ridiculous crap like ‘My eyesight’s not what it used to be, you know.’” He purposely made his voice higher-pitched and wobblier than it normally was, like a cartoon grandma, and laughed louder when Quentin howled at the imitation.

Sometimes it was the little things in life. This life had made him realize that more than anything else. Little things like being able to make the man he loved laugh so hard it turned into a coughing fit, even after 60 years. Like how Quentin placed tiles with the same determination that maybe this iteration would hold the solution. It had been years since Eliot had considered what they would do if they solved this thing. If they would go back to their old life – how would that even work? They had a kid here, grandkids, he had Quentin and a lifetime of memories he wouldn’t trade, good and bad.

If they solved this before they died, Eliot wasn’t sure what would happen, but part of him wanted to see that victory for Quentin. He deserved it, and so much more after everything Quentin had given him. Eliot wanted to see it, but he was tired, the kind he felt in his bones. He was tired and happy, and as he thought about it, his fingers still absentmindedly folding in on themselves clumsily, he noticed how those two things hadn’t co-existed within him in a very long time.

Watching the methodic, practiced, routine way Quentin went about placing the tiles was easy, and soothing. After a few minutes, he felt his eyes get heavier. Eventually, he gave in to the tug of sleep on his consciousness and dozed off in the late afternoon sun.

Some undetermined, but not possibly long enough, time later, he was jostled back into the waking world. Slowly, and with the appropriate amount of groaning to both protest and entertain, he opened his eyes. A panic-stricken Quentin hovered over him.

“Jesus, El,” Q said, patting down some of his wild white hair in a self-soothing gesture.

“What? A man can’t take a nap anymore?”

The look Q pinned him with said a lot of things neither of them was willing to say aloud.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll shout nap next time, first, or something.”

Quentin tried to wipe the fear from his face with a nervous laugh, but he wasn’t entirely successful. Eliot reached out, covering Q’s hands with his own.

“Hey,” he said softly, “It’s still me. Eliot Motherfucking Waugh, alive and kicking.” For emphasis, he kicked out a leg from underneath the blanket and was rewarded with a half-hearted chuckle that sounded much closer to the Quentin Eliot adored.

“I’m right here,” Eliot said, squeezing Quentin’s hands.

Quentin nodded, squeezing back. “Good,” was all he said. It was all Eliot needed. Quentin was all Eliot needed, really. He leaned forward, ignoring the twinge of pain in his lower back, and kissed the back of Quentin’s hands. Quentin leaned forward and caught Eliot’s lips on the way back up. It was soft, sweet, and familiar. Something they’d been doing for so long now that it was as easy as breathing.

“So, veggie stew?” Eliot asked when Quentin pulled away. They both laughed.

****

“Eliot?” Quentin said, his voice timid, like he was dealing with a very fragile thing, like speaking too loud or with too much force might cause it to shatter. Eliot wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.

“I just – I can’t keep doing this, Q,” Eliot said, his voice bone-tired.

“What? What exactly is it you think you’re doing?”

Eliot could hear the heat building in Quentin’s voice, could practically feel the agitation that somehow always turned into heroic action where it always dissolved into fruitless subversion for him. Shit. He really couldn’t tell which thoughts were his and which were the key’s anymore.

“Fucking it up. If fucking up was an actual discipline, I’d have been top of my class,” Eliot grumbled, entirely disregarding the fact that he actually had been nearly top of his class anyway.

“That’s not true. You can’t just listen to that thing. You have to fight back,” Quentin said, and then, after inhaling to harden his resolve, “Will you just…please give me the key? At least until you can get your head on straight.”

Eliot shook his head. “No. No fucking way.”

“I can handle it,” Q said determinedly.

“Not up for debate.”

Eliot saw the retort there, right on the tip of Quentin’s tongue, but it faded under the equally determined stare Eliot gave him.

“Fine,” Q huffed, “Then just, listen to me.”

Not-Eliot was in the middle of pointing out all the ways in which he was a tremendous disappointment to everyone he’d ever loved, but something in Quentin’s tone held his attention.

“El, without you, we wouldn’t even be on this quest. You decided to find a way to bring magic back. We wouldn’t be halfway there if you weren’t here and that’s just fact. But even without all that, you’re Eliot the spectacular, ok? And that’s who I need you to be right now. Don’t let that handsome dipshit take away the truth of you.”

“What is the truth of me, Q?”

Not-Eliot hissed about how stupid he was to hope in that moment, but Eliot awaited the answer somewhat breathlessly all the same.

Quentin’s eyes bounced around Eliot’s face as he spoke. “You’re Eliot Waugh, ok? You’re a good friend, and you’re a – a great quester, and.”

Eliot wriggled in Quentin’s arms, finally breaking loose. He’d heard plenty of impassioned speeches from Quentin in his day, and as far as they went, this one came up kind of short.

“Eliot! No!” Quentin said as Eliot scrambled to his feet again.

“I said a GOOD reason, Q,” Eliot murmured, looking to the edge of the boat and trying to calculate how fast he could get there over the incessant reminders of how worthless he was that were coming faster, and with increasing volume, from Not-Eliot.

“You were a really great father,” Q said, and Eliot froze. “And don’t you dare say that doesn’t count, because Teddy’s not here. It counts to me, and honestly, I just really kinda need you El. I – I can’t do this on my own. I can’t be the only one walking around with all these memories inside me, with all these, uh- ” he faltered.

Eliot took a step closer to Quentin. A step further away from the prow of the ship.

“These feelings,” Quentin continued. “I can’t just have this whole other life in my head and then the only person who gets it, who was there, who has these memories, too, just throws themselves overboard because of a stupid key!”

“Q-” Eliot said, blinking slowly, pressing his hands against his ears for a moment and looking around.

“No! Some things are – are more important than the quest and – fuck, ok, I kind of can’t believe I just said that but, you know what? Whatever, it’s true and-El, I just, I lo-”

“Q!” Eliot repeated, louder this time, holding out his pointer finger to shut him up. “He’s – gone.”

Quentin’s brows knitted together, his forehead scrunching down over his eyes. “What? How? Poppy said that the only way to get rid of it was, well, you know.”

“I know,” Eliot glanced behind him at the edge of the boat and felt something dark twist in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed hard. “But he’s gone.”

“Shit, that’s,” but Q’s voice cut off when Eliot’s hand when for the breast pocket of his elaborately designed waistcoat, and a panicked look fell across his features.

Frantically, Eliot patted all over his outfit, eyes scanning the deck wildly as he did.

“Your majesty,” Benedict said, and a sick feeling churned inside of him as he turned to his mild-mannered map maker. “The key, it was just sliding around the deck.”

_ No.  _ “No.”

Eliot thought it, Quentin said it, and they both dove for Benedict’s outstretched arm at the same time, both saw the grim, broken look on Benedict’s face. Benedict instinctively pulled his arm back into his chest.

“Benedict, look, just, give me back the key,” Eliot said carefully, approaching Benedict slowly.

Quentin shot a warning look at Eliot that clearly said he didn’t think putting the key back in Eliot’s hands was the best idea, but Eliot pointedly ignored it. He wasn’t going to be responsible for Benedict’s death. Benedict, however, shook his head slowly, tears welling in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Benedict said, the tears spilling over as he backed away from them both. It was slow at first, but then he turned on his heel and ran toward the edge of the boat. Eliot dove after him, Quentin right there beside him, but they couldn’t make it in time. He was over the edge just as Eliot reached his arm out to grasp the tail end of his coat, but it slipped out of his fingers as Benedict plunged into the ocean.

“Shit,” Eliot said, slumping onto the deck.

He heard something stirring in the water, and pushed himself up in time to see the head of a…fucking dragon? Was that a goddamned DRAGON?! popping out of the water as it swallowed what Eliot, queasy, realized had to be Benedict.

“Mmm,” it said, licking its lips and snorting out a puff of smoke. Jesus fuck, of course there was a dragon. “Yummy.” It stared Eliot and Quentin down for a minute before turning around and diving back into the ocean.

“What the all-encompassing fuck?” Eliot said, looking over at Quentin, who was still staring blankly at the spot the dragon had disappeared from.

“The key. The dragon ate the key.”

Eliot looked back out to the water and set his hands on his hips, heaving an exhausted sigh. “Well, fuck.”


	5. The Second Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot struggles on their second mosaic anniversary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for hanging in there with me on this one! It's an all-mosaic chapter so navigating it was a little different, and I fell into something of a muse slump a couple of weeks back. I've got some fun twists on the back half of s3 planned for upcoming chapters, though, so stay tuned! Chapter 6 is in the works!

Eliot had believed, wholeheartedly, that they would be back home by now. When he toasted Quentin a year ago, calling it their "first and last" year here, he meant it. But here they were, on the morning of their 2nd mosaic anniversary, and he felt like a liar. He couldn't have known, of course, but that didn't make the nagging frustration tensing his shoulders and coiling in his stomach any less real. 

He'd been awake for at least 20 minutes, staring at the thatched ceiling of the hut, trying to will himself out of bed. Most days, the monotony that awaited them felt tolerable. Some days, it even felt like it had a big, consuming purpose. But today, under the pressing realization that he and Quentin had officially dedicated 2 entire years of their lives to this thing, with nothing to show for it, starting the routine felt impossible. The bed felt lumpy and uncomfortable, the blankets scratchy against his skin. Tiny things he rarely noticed anymore were obnoxious and obvious. The way the sunlight filtered in through the window across the hut, soft and grey as it rose above the forest surrounding them felt uncomfortably bright against his eyes. The sounds of the birds chirping, beckoning them awake, grated against his ears. The scent of the peat and moss that he'd begun to associate with comfort was suffocating. Everything about the new day dawning screeched "failure" at him, shrill and taunting.

The only thing that kept him from groaning, rolling over, and telling the world, the mosaic, and, frankly, the quest at large to fuck right off so he could properly wallow in just how spectacularly he'd messed this up was a firm, steady arm wrapped around his waist. Quentin shifted beside him and Eliot sighed contentedly, the breath unraveling the tiniest bit of the knot sitting uncomfortably in his chest. Ok, so maybe he didn't have  _ nothing  _ to show for the last two years.

Their second year at the mosaic had been a mixed bag for the pair of them. Eliot had never been one for defining things. Giving something a clear definition left an awful lot of room for it to disappoint you, or hurt you, and he'd seen enough of both to avoid them whenever possible. Things with Quentin here were no exception. What was the point, he'd asked himself time and time again. It was a ridiculous idea, to get caught up in something here when they were headed back to their real lives any day now. Their real lives, where Alice Quinn was within reach and Quentin Coldwater would never choose Eliot over her.

"Rise and shine, our eternal defeatist task beckons," Eliot said as Quentin re-entered the waking world with a sleepy grumble that twisted something in Eliot's chest. 

Eliot tightened the arm settled around Quentin's shoulders, soaked in the warmth of Quentin's body curled against his own for just a little longer. In moments like these, even with the weight of having failed to keep his promise to Q that they would be home by now, Eliot was overwhelmed with what he’d gained in the past year, despite actively trying to ward it off. It was terrifying, to have his heart skip a beat in his chest when Quentin looked up at him with sleepy eyes, a small smile tugging up the corners of the other man’s lips. It made his breath catch in his throat, the unguarded way Q’s eyes softened at the sight of him, the way Eliot could feel his own gaze softening in response. Somehow, he summoned the strength to throw back the blanket and disentangle himself to start the day.

The small ball of warmth he'd created from those last moments in bed didn't hold out for long. After three failed attempts, the weight of their second year settled back on Eliot's shoulders. Every unsuccessful mosaic configuration reminded him that there was only one right answer to this thing, and, as Quentin had so eloquently put it upon their arrival, a shit load of wrong ones. Probability was not on their side, magic was not on their side. Sheer determination and patience were the only things they had to rely on and today, for a hundred reasons, it felt like they were both in cripplingly short supply.

"I'm out, I can't do another one right now," Eliot groaned, exasperated, and stalked away from the completed attempt, balling his fists at his side to release some of the building tension in his body.

"Fine, I'll take a crack at it just let me write yours down first," Quentin said, with an edge Eliot didn't remember hearing from him when they'd first woken up.

He watched as Quentin sketched the tiles and removed them, returning them to the original piles on the outskirts of the now-blank square. Two years. He'd watched Quentin do this, and little else, for two entire years now. Their second year, for better or worse, had been complicated by their first anniversary. Eliot tried to keep it casual. He allowed them both a pass. They rarely saw other people, unless they ventured into the village, which always felt like such a waste of time when the mosaic remained unsolved. They had needs, they trusted each other. It made sense to Eliot that things would fall into a pattern like this. Refusing definition made it easier for him to ignore what the pattern meant, to let his thoughts flit by without needing to reflect on them. He didn't need to wonder why he liked the feel of Quentin's body against his own first thing in the morning. He didn't need to dwell on the fact that, of all the sweet things he tasted on Quentin's lips when they kissed, the sweetest of them was "home." He didn't have to worry about the Alice of it all or what would - or wouldn't - happen when they returned, key in hand.

Somewhere along the line, Eliot felt more than he bargained for. He felt the shift a year ago when they kissed, but it grew, and continued growing until Eliot couldn't ignore it anymore. Now, as he watched Quentin stacking the piles with a furrow in his brow that wasn't usually there, he was at a loss. Falling in love with Quentin Coldwater was never the plan, not like this.

The morning faded into afternoon without much change except increased frustration, a palpable entity that seemed to be feeding off one another's growing restlessness with the day, with the realization that when the suns set this time, they would no longer be on their first and last year at this thing. They would be stepping into year three, with no end in sight. What frightened Eliot most about that concept wasn't the way the failure tugged at him, a reminder that he wasn't as good as he wanted everyone to believe he was. It was that the idea of another year, another five or ten or fifty of doing this didn't seem so bad, if Quentin was the one he was doing it with.

"This is such bullshit," Quentin growled as he placed the last tile in another failed attempt, the anger in his voice shaking Eliot from his reverie. Quentin stood, stomping on the last tile like it might make a difference, and threw his hands up, bending over to take the tile out of its place. He chucked it, it collided with a tree and fell with a ceramic  _ tink  _ at the roots of the tree.

"Whoa there cowboy," Eliot said, picking the tile up, "At least let me write it down before you hulk out on the tiles."

"This is hopeless," Quentin said miserably in response, stepping aside as Eliot grabbed a sheet of paper and the basket of chalk, beginning the work of sketching this iteration.

"Hopeless might be a little strong," Eliot reasoned, though he'd felt that same empty, drained sensation earlier in the day. He was a man torn, a curse he couldn't seem to escape in any reality. Torn between wanting to get back to their lives in the real world, wanting to find the rest of the keys and restore magic, and wanting to stay here, with Quentin, in a world where Quentin had chosen him, more than once. He'd spent the last year fighting the fact that he wanted,  _ needed  _ to be chosen like that, but as his patience for the mosaic waned, so did his ability to ward off the truth of that need.

"No, I don't think it is," Quentin sighed, running a hand through the hair that had fallen from his bun in his display of frustration. "Two years, Eliot. We've been doing this for TWO YEARS. I don't want to do it anymore. Maybe we're not the ones who Jane gets the key from. Maybe this is just some ridiculous joke, maybe the quest just sent us on some stupid detour."

Eliot knitted his brows together as he started disassembling Quentin's work, building the piles by color almost without thinking. It was muscle memory by now, the act of starting over. The mosaic was a source of frustration for them both, but Eliot had never heard Quentin doubt the quest, even on the days when they were so mad they barely spoke a word to one another.

"Come on, Q," Eliot said, trying to diffuse the despair before it hardened into anger. The piles of tiles got larger beneath him without him even fully realizing he was still disassembling it. "We're getting closer, we have to be." He didn't know how much he believed his own words, but Quentin needed to be diffused and he was doing his best, despite not being the champion pep talker between the two of them.

"Are we?" Quentin asked, stomping around now. "It doesn't feel like we are. It feels like we wasted another whole year of our lives!"

He knew it shouldn't have, but the words stung somewhere deep and, Eliot previously thought, impenetrable within him. Without another word, he finished stacking the tiles and grabbed the sheet of paper he'd sketched Quentin's attempt on, picking up the stack of papers documenting the rest of the day's failed attempts from where they were abandoned on a nearby chair.

"Tell me I'm wrong!" Quentin pressed, and Eliot, who had been trying his hardest not to let the flicker of anger rise in his chest until he couldn't put it out, felt the heat of it rush forward now.

"Fine, you're wrong!" Eliot said, tightening his grip on the stack of papers as he moved across the mosaic to place them with the rest of the drawings from the week. "We could be done tomorrow for all you know! We can't just throw away all this time we've invested," he gestured, to the mosaic, to the sketches, the force behind his voice building.

Why couldn't Quentin just look outside of the quest, and the mosaic, for two fucking seconds, to see that there was something bigger happening here?  _ Because he doesn't want it.  _ The thought cut through his consciousness like a trained response, and the fear of it gripped at him. It made no logical sense. It didn't stack up against the man who spent almost every night sleeping with his head on Eliot's chest, or the fits of passion they'd shared over the past year. It didn't match the innocent way Quentin told him a year ago, "I want last night to happen again." It didn't match the ease with which he and Quentin had built this life of theirs over the past couple of years. It didn't match, but it didn't have to, to scare Eliot into lashing out.

"If you want to live your life, live it here," he spat, tossing the sketches on the table, eyes darting to everything on the table, unable to turn around and face Quentin for fear that what he didn't say would be so easy to see in his eyes:  _ With me. _

"What's  _ that  _ supposed to mean?" Quentin asked, his tone sharp enough to cut. It only spurred Eliot on. God, sometimes Q was just so dense.

"You know exactly what that means," he said, shuffling things around on the table with no real purpose other than keeping his back to the man who both held the fuse to his anger and knew, whether or not consciously, exactly how to douse it.

The sound of a stack of tiles tumbling behind him broke his avoidance, and he turned, a steely-eyed Quentin looking back at him. "Whoops," Q said with a dismissive shrug.

"What the fuck, Q?"

"What are you gonna do about it?" Quentin mocked, crossing his arms over his chest in a challenge.

Eliot rolled his eyes, shaking his head and stepping to the toppled stack, realigning the tiles until they were a proper tower again. "Nothing, you're acting like a child."

"Oh my god," Quentin said, throwing his hands up, "God forbid I have human emotions!"

Eliot stiffened, slowly letting his eyes rise to meet Quentin's, his jaw set. "Excuse me?"

"You're just- you're acting like some mosaic-solving robot who only cares about this one fucking thing and I mean - do you even know it's the anniversary of us being here?"

"What exactly do you want me to say here?" Eliot asked, bracing his hands on his knees and pushing himself up.

"I don't know, something, anything that isn't about the stupid mosaic," Quentin said, moving to kick another stack of tiles over, freezing before the connection at the warning in Eliot's eyes.

"This stupid mosaic is our only ticket back home, are you trying to tell me you don't want to get back there?"

Quentin's eyes fell to the stack of tiles he nearly kicked. "N-no, I'm not saying that, I just -"

"Just what, Q? We're supposed to be figuring out how to represent the beauty of all life here, it's not going to be a fucking cakewalk."

"Right, so. Just so I'm clear here. You want me to live my life here, but you want to be a mosaic-solving robot so we can get back home faster?"

"Jesus," Eliot sighed, "No, okay? That's not what I meant."

"Well what did you mean then, exactly? Because I'm pretty fucking confused here, El."

There was something in Quentin's voice, something different in his gaze. Something real, and raw. Something that made Eliot want to run. He resisted the urge, for once. "Q...." he said, scrambling for a way out of this, the anger in him deflating in the face of this thing so real it could only scare him shitless.

"No, don't do that. You don't get to do that!"

Eliot's heart lurched in his chest, his feelings for Quentin warring with his instincts for self-preservation. It was a bloody battle, the casualties mounting with every second he couldn't decide which should win. He knew that he had been well on his way to Quentin before they ever arrived at the mosaic. Ever since their misguided night with Margo, Eliot hadn't been able to rid himself of the feeling, quiet but insistent, that he wanted more with Quentin. There had always been something bigger, darker, more important on the line to distract him from that seed growing. The Beast, Fillory, the loss of magic, the quest. But now, he was stalled.  _ They _ were stalled in something simpler. Distractions were gone and that seed had grown into a sprawling vine, taking over everything. Facing it seemed inevitable and impossible.

"What do I get to do, then?" Eliot asked. He couldn't trust himself to come up with something on his own.

"Be honest, for once," Quentin said.

Everything inside of Eliot tried to resist it, tried to scramble for a lie that might keep them safe. Because if they did figure it out tomorrow, if they finally placed the right tiles in the right places and the key appeared, they would go home. The quest would continue. Quentin would choose Alice, and Eliot would be left with the sharp, unsolvable pain that only came with true rejection. But there was another possibility, one that wouldn't let him draw a line he couldn't come back from. It was that possibility, however slim, that brought Eliot closer to Quentin in quick, short strides, the space between them diminishing to a few small, charged inches.

"You don't really want that," Eliot said, his voice quieter, lower now. It was a final out for Quentin, one last chance to deliver the blow Eliot expected to come. 

Quentin looked up at him, startled. Eliot watched his adam's apple bob in his throat. "Yes, I do."

Eliot's eyes fell from Quentin's eyes down to his lips. He stepped forward, dipping down as Quentin leaned up. They met in the middle, lips crashing together in something familiar, warm, comforting. Eliot's hands cupped Quentin's face as he opened his mouth to deepen the kiss. When he pulled away slowly, reluctantly, he looked down at Quentin, whose eyes were already roving Eliot's face, searching for more. "I'm not good at this, okay? I don't do feelings well, and all of this," he motioned at their hut, at the mosaic, "I don't know what it means or when it's going to end, and that, I don't really know what to do with that. But, I can't change the fact that I love you, Q. I've tried not to, believe me, it'd be a hell of a lot easier if I could just...turn it off, but I can't, and I -"

"I love you, too, El," Quentin interrupted, softly, leaning back up to close the distance between them again.

"Happy anniversary," Eliot murmured against Quentin's lips. Quentin wrapped his arms around Eliot's waist, pulling their bodies flush against one another. Eliot let his hands tangle into Quentin's hair, let emotion pour out of him in a way he rarely did, giving it all to Quentin, replaying his words on a loop in his head.  _ I love you too, El.  _ Maybe it was temporary. Maybe it would disappear the minute they got back, but Eliot thought for once, for at least tonight, he could let himself believe it would last.


End file.
